2 years ago

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I’m going to die tomorrow morning.

That’s what I get told when the demons come to visit my prison cell every day, but I know this time it’s for sure. I’ve been here for weeks, months probably - I only know because I’ve been counting the amount of times they come to feed me, not that the food they give is any more appetizing.

Monday. Tuesday.

Friday. A week.

Two weeks.

Four.

I stopped counting after that. Seconds turn into minutes, minutes into hours, an endless void of nothingness filled only with the quiet trickle of water and the gentle flicker of the torches. The only company I have is the disjointed whispers of my own thoughts, the last remnants of my sanity laid bare in front of me.

But tomorrow, it will be over. I’m to be sacrificed to entertain the lord of this castle for all to see; the method chosen was to burn me alive. They tell me that I should be honoured that it wasn’t something more painful, that I should thank him for giving me this privilege.

I close my eyes. It seems as if I was destined to be powerless in this life as well. It takes me some time to realize that I was laughing, perhaps at how cruel the gods were, perhaps just to fill the silence. I had begun to rock back and forth as well, not wanting to go insane just yet. I try my best to keep warm, creating a rhythm of movement, but my efforts seemed to be in vain as I only felt increasingly more numb after having not moved for a long time. I stop trying.

It’s so cold down here. Light trickles in from the hole in the wall as if to try and provide some reassurance, but it’s not long before it’s engulfed by the darkness. My clothes are torn, and my face is covered in dirt and grime. I want to drench myself in water and scrub myself clean. Is it strange that all I can think about on my last day is how dirty I am? If my older brother were here, he would tell me to stop being weak and start being strong.

As if it was that easy.

I lowered my head into my hands. How did I end up like this?

But I know how, of course. It’s because I had given up on my life.

It happened about half a year ago now, as I was walking home with my brother. We had just finished paying for groceries and were on our way out. It was raining heavily, almost like a flood was coming down from the skies. But even the rain couldn’t drown out the conversations around me. The people around me were talking about me, of course. Everyone’s conversations were always about me.

I was the talk of our neighbourhood. Enzo Laurent? They all said. Oh, he’s the failure in that family. Poor thing. He should have been more like his brother.

No one meant because I wasn’t smart. I’m not trying to be arrogant, only honest. My mother once told me that whoever had seen the success of my father was now waiting to see which of his two sons would follow his footsteps. My older brother, Hans, was fifteen when he won his first international competition and was already the distinguished image of perfection. Unlike me, Hans had inherited our mother’s charm and radiant temperament. He was natural at talking to people, enjoyed going out and exuberated an aura that made people want to be near him. I was the complete opposite, an introvert, who found more enjoyment being absorbed into books and video games than with people. If you needed accolades to prove that you were intelligent, then you weren’t very intelligent, I had thought. I’d often stay inside, reading as much as I could and mastering the hardest strategy games around. It wasn’t long before I had devoured practically hundreds of books, both fiction and non-fiction and had completed every game there was on the market.

We were a family, once.

My father would take Has on trips and they’d enjoy themselves together, just the two of them. He would tell his business friends how proud he was to have a willing and dedicated son. He would buy him anything he wanted, no matter how expensive it was. He would remind him how amazing he was, how he would take over his business once he retired, how he could make his family even more successful than it already was. Hans already had a line of investors waiting to work with him and my father would tell each of them to be patient, that the time wasn’t right yet. What a caring father, everyone thought.

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I was another story. Unlike my brother, blessed with shining blonde hair to complement his bright, blue eyes and pale skin, I was flawed. And by flawed, I mean this: When I was five years old, our house had caught on fire in the middle of the night and everyone in our house was fast asleep. No one was awake. It wasn’t until our house started falling apart did our father wake up. At this point, our mother had already passed away from all the smoke inhalation. Thinking back, I would have liked to go away silently as well.

There was no time. Our father could only save one of us and who would he choose? The one who had charm and laughed all the time, or the one with cold, calculating eyes and seldom showed expression? He of course, chose the former and without a single look back at me, scooped up my brother and ran out of the house. I was five at the time but I already knew my father had abandoned me. The last thing I remembered then was thinking how beautiful the shape of fire was when you were up close to it.

But fate had different plans for me. It was both a blessing and a curse in disguise. The good news was that I had actually survived the flames. However, I ended up being left with horrific scars all over my face and body, to the point of which you couldn’t recognize who I was before. To me, both of these facts were instead just burdens on trying to live a normal life. No one wanted to work or talk with me. I was an outcast.

So yes. You could say I was flawed.

When my brother eventually recovered from the incident unscathed, I now had a disfigured face, so much so that people avoided trying to look at me. While my brother’s hair remained a luminous yellow, the strands of my hair turned a deep, black color, so that in the night, you would be able to see the reflections of the moonlight in my hair. At least my mother died peacefully. Sometimes I wish that the fire had taken my father instead but that would be too easy of a way out for him.

Hans and I had just made it out of the store and we were on our way home late at night. I tried to brush off the conversations I’d overheard from earlier today and dismiss them as mere gossip like I’d always had, but there was just a couple of nagging thoughts that I couldn’t got rid of. He's a joke. His father must be so embarrassed of him. He should just kill himself. It wasn’t long before they multiplied, running rampant through my head and I was helpless to stop them from piercing my thoughts.

sinceyouareafailureofasonwhohasonlybroughtshametohisfamilypeoplelikeyoushouldhaveneverbeenborninthefirstplaceitisaproblemsincethemomentyouwereborntheproblemisthatyouwereborntheproblemisthatyouarealivethatyouhavelivedandthatyouaregoingtocontinuetoliveeventhoughyouaretrashandwhatevercomesoutofyourmouthistrashandeverythingyoudoistrashyoushouldjustkillyourselfbutwhenyoudodoitwherenoonewillfindyourbodyandnoonewillrememberyoubecauseofhowpatheticyouareandhowdisgustingyourexistenceis

I hadn’t noticed the bright lights until it was too late. Instead, I found myself staring up at the night sky and thought to myself, just how magnificent the stars and constellations were and how they were so wonderfully connected to each other. I tried to point at Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, a beacon of light in the sea of darkness, but my arm failed to cooperate. Strange, I had thought. Was I so weak that I couldn’t even move myself?

The rain started to grow more heavily, lightning streaked across the sky, and thunder shook my bones. I kept staring at the star, after all, it was the only thing I could do. I thought about all the things I’d done in my life, all the things I could have done and hadn’t. I thought about my father, how he’d chosen my brother over me and how much I hated him. I thought about so many more things, as I lay there on the pavement, my face a mixed expression, my gaze fixed on that one point in space.

Suddenly, I felt as if I was going to cry. I’d never cried once in my life, not even when I was facing against the world did I ever feel like crying. I believed I just didn’t have the capacity to, but I couldn’t hold myself back this time. My breaths came in ragged sobs, and my head burned in agony. Blood trickled down my face. The smell of iron filled my nose – I was sure it couldn’t have been mine. I waited, uncertain what had happened.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, unsure of whom I was talking to. I wanted to move my head, wanting to apologize to Hans, but my head wouldn’t turn, almost as if it wasn’t mine. The storm drowned my words out. I blinked. This was all wrong.

But that was a lie. I knew it, even if I tried to deny it. Do you see how I take after my father? I felt nothing at all. “I’m sorry!” I screamed again, trying to drown out my inner voice. But my words only came out as a thin gargle. “I just wanted to be listened to—I just wanted—someone—I didn’t—I don't—”

I had no idea how long I laid there. All I know is that, eventually, I blacked out, and after what seemed like an eternity, woke up here as someone else, imprisoned in a wet dungeon cell with no windows and no hope, without any explanation, without a soul in the world. This is how I first came to my surroundings, how I turned to face the end of my life without any emotion at all. My father’s ghost keeps me company. Every time I wake up from a nightmare, I see him standing in the corner of my cell, laughing at me. You tried to escape from me, he says, but I found you. You have lost and I have won. I tell him I’m glad I’m gone. I tell him to go away. But he stays.

It doesn’t matter, anyway. I’m going to die tomorrow morning.